


So Dear To Me, So Beautiful

by beetle



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Inception
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-14
Updated: 2013-04-14
Packaged: 2017-12-08 11:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/760912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beetle/pseuds/beetle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for this inception_kink prompt, "Robert gets a visit from someone while he's laid up and miserable in the hospital (whether he's seriously ill or it's something minor is up to the author). Canon-compliant or AU; established relationship or not; it's all good.</p>
            </blockquote>





	So Dear To Me, So Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don’t own any of this, so quit askin’.  
> Notes: Set post Inception. Mentions of self-harm.

"You are so dear to me, so beautiful."  
  
Robert doesn’t roll over in the scratchy, uncomfortable hospital bed. Why bother? Saito always says the same things, always looks the same way . . . hurt and disappointed. As if Robert’s . . . episodes . . . are merely another way to hurt him.  
  
“Will you at least look at me, Robert?”  
  
“And what would be the point of that, Saito-san?” Robert asks, but he does roll over, this time. Saito is sitting in the chair by his bed, immaculate in his suit and holding a clipboard and pen.  
  
Normally, seeing his lover thus makes Robert want to muss him up. To rip and tear at the suit until Saito’s bared to him, all coiled muscle and unhidden power.  
  
Now, however, Saito’s composure merely makes Robert resentful.  
  
Saito sighs, shifting gracefully from bedside to bed, putting down his Mark Cross pen and the clipboard (Robert’s release forms, no doubt), and taking Robert’s wrist. His warm, calloused fingers rub absently over the scars there, some more faint than others. His eyes are terrible in their concern and compassion—these eyes he’s seen cut men to the quick with nothing more than a glance.  
  
Robert turns his face away, tears springing to his eyes.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says, and Saito makes a small sound of dismissal, as if to say  _there is nothing to be sorry for_. He touches Robert’s chin, nudges gently till Robert’s facing him once more. That terrible compassion is gone, masked by sternness and keen interest.  
  
“Why do you do this, Robert? Is life so horrible for you, now?”  
  
 _Is life_ with me _so horrible for you, now?_  is the unasked question, as always. For such a competent man, Saito hasn’t one-tenth his normal confidence in their relationship as he has regarding everything else in his life. And why should he, with the regularity of which Robert tries to erase himself?  
  
(And secretly, Robert believes that Saito’s inability to fix him or figure him out is what keeps the man coming back for more: more moodiness, more melancholy, more screaming fits, more suicide attempts, and recently, more distracted silences that end with Robert weeping himself into an exhausted sleep.)  
  
Robert sighs, cupping Saito’s face in his hand, stroking one strong cheekbone with his thumb. “No, life with you is wonderful, Saito-san. I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone.”  
  
That flicker in Saito’s eyes, like watching a cement wall tremble, is there and gone before Robert can do more than marvel at it, and wonder why he doesn’t tell Saito he loves him more often.  
  
“You’re the only reason I’m still here,” Robert says softly, his voice hoarse and raw. Tonight wasn’t the first time he’s had his stomach pumped, and probably won’t be the last. “I live for you, and only you.”  
  
Saito closes his eyes for a few moments, leaning into Robert’s touch like it has the power to heal. Laughable, since Robert can’t even heal himself.  
  
“But I am . . . not enough for you, anymore.” It’s not a question. Saito rarely asks them, and almost only of Robert, and regarding Robert.  
  
“I don’t—I  _want_  you to be enough,” Robert says miserably. Saito’s dark, wounded-flicker eyes search his own. “I would make you my entire world. You’re the only thing that makes me happy, anymore.”  
  
“I exist for nothing else,” Saito says with the solemnity that used to make Robert laugh before he realized that Saito just might be telling the truth. Now, it only makes him shiver, and feel guilty.  
  
Saito pulls him close, embraces him in a way that makes Robert feel protected and small.  
  
“We will find a way to make you well,” Saito promises, his voice as rough as Robert’s. He smells of sandalwood and clean skin, forcibly reminding Robert that he, himself, smells of hospital detergent and vomit. “You  _will_  get better.”   
  
“I know.” If Saito can tell comforting lies, so can Robert.  
  
Saito sits back enough to gaze into Robert’s eyes. His own are what Robert might call panicked, were he to see that look in anyone else’s eyes. “You must promise to try. To stay with me. You are the only thing that is real in this awful place.”  
  
An odd way to put it—a  _Robert_  way to put it, and to hear such a thing coming from Saito’s lips is . . . startling, to put it mildly—but Robert doesn’t have long to ponder because Saito is kissing him hard, forcefully, as if trying to climb into Robert’s skin.  
  
“No, don’t—“ Robert pulls away, blushing. “I taste awful. They had to pump my stomach—“  
  
But Saito’s kissing him again, tenderly, this time. Robert’s arms wind around his neck and Saito’s hands settle on his waist.  
  
“I love you,” Saito whispers on Roberts lips, kissing his way to Robert’s throat, and hiding his face there. Simply . . . breathing in, as if Robert’s scent has come to mean comfort.  
  
“I love you, too,” Robert says, running his hand through Saito’s hair and closing his eyes as tears leak out. “All I want is to wake up with you.” He kisses the top of Saito’s head.  
  
He knows that, in a month, or two, or six, there’ll be a time when he can’t stop weeping. When the world and everything in it is no longer enough. When  _Saito_  isn’t enough.  
  
When he sleeps and sleeps and sleeps, only to wake up  _still_  dreaming, the only certainty left in him that he  _must_  find a way to stop dreaming. To end this horrible limbo once and for all and find out what waits on the other side.  
  
Robert looks at his scarred wrist, then at the pale, vulnerable back of Saito’s neck. Without really thinking about it, he lets the fingers of his other hand close around the Mark Cross pen. . . .  
  
Saito would close his eyes, and the next time he opened them, he would be awake, and maybe . . . maybe he could wake Robert up, too.  
  
“I love you,” Saito murmurs again, his voice slow and drugged, as if he’s falling asleep. Every muscle in his body seems relaxed and heavy against Robert.  
  
“I know you do, Saito-san . . . do you trust me, too?”  
  
“Yes. Of course.” He shivers in Robert’s arms.  
  
“Good. It’s good that you do.” Robert smiles and holds the pen up, behind Saito’s back. Poises it just above that pale, vulnerable swatch of skin.  
  
"You’re . . . you’re waiting for a train,” he tells Saito, his voice choked and useless to his own ears. He strokes Saito’s hair harder, as if soothing a crying child. But Saito is very still in his arms. Almost preternaturally so. “A train that’ll take you far away. You know where you hope this train’ll take you, but . . . you can't be sure. But it doesn't matter, because . . . we'll be together. . . ."


End file.
